


Like Hell

by Noccalula



Series: The Mother We Share: The Maximoff Series [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Aftermath, Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie) Spoilers, Between Age of Ultron and Civil War, Brother/Sister Incest, F/M, Genderqueer Character, Grief/Mourning, If you somehow don't know how that ended this is probably not for you, Incest, Introspection, Multi, Nonbinary Character, Original Characters - Freeform, Original Female Character(s) - Freeform, Past Tense, Post-Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Sequel to I Don't Hear The Church Bells Chime Anymore, Therapy, Unlikely to be smut given the circumstances, Wanda Maximoff Needs a Hug, maxicest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-09
Updated: 2016-09-21
Packaged: 2018-08-14 03:03:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7996201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Noccalula/pseuds/Noccalula
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set after I Don't Hear The Church Bells Chime Anymore, between Age of Ultron and Civil War - a short fic about choices, grief and letting go.<br/><br/></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Burgundy

**Author's Note:**

> The long-awaited companion piece (I hesitate to say "sequel" though it's in the tags) to I Don't Hear The Church Bells Chime Anymore is here to bridge the gap between AoU and Civil War. 
> 
> You don't HAVE to have read the first part to understand this one, but I do highly recommend it for vanity reasons. 
> 
> Those of you familiar with my Wanda & Pietro writing will know this but, head's up - this is Maxicest centric. It's not smut, but it will mention sexual and romantic relationships between biological brother and sister. If it ain't your jam I totally understand. 
> 
> Those of you who follow my work know you can now find me on Tumblr at noccalula-writes, please feel free to drop me a line if you're so inclined. 
> 
> I apologize for any long delays in any of my work - I'm getting married October 8th, which is taking up a lot of time and planning, and we had to put down a cat and kitten we were fostering, which made me too sad to function creatively for a little while. That said, I'm hoping to have enough squirreled back that you will hardly notice my absence when I run off to marry my partner of 10 years (whom I met thanks to fanfiction, no less). 
> 
> Enjoy! As always, feedback is always welcomed, and thank you for stopping by.

 

 

“Grief only exists where love lived first.”

 

Franchesca Cox

 

  

 

Wanda dreams of Novi Grad often.

 

Rubble rains down around her in sharp gray cascades, the rumble of the earth beneath her being lifted so impossibly high above the ground such a deep sound that it reverberates in the hollow of her chest. The bus. Ultron. His hot metal heart in her fist and his dying words of concern for her.

 

Some nights that last part makes her sad, so deeply and unbelievably much sadder than she already was. It descends her into a depth of despair she didn’t know was humanly possible. It’s like falling into a cave, straight down past jagged rocks, watching the hole you came in through get smaller and smaller until it was nothing but a pinprick of light that was unreachable in every way imaginable.

 

Other nights, it makes her so mad she feels physically ill. Mere weeks after the destruction of the city and laying in her bed at the Avengers training facility, Wanda worked herself into such a state of absolute fury that the walls began to split and the foundation began to rumble. Steve Rogers had bolted upright out of his bed and ran to her almost on instinct; the rumbling stopped when he kicked in the door and found Wanda curled onto her knees on the floor, vomiting.

The others were afraid of her – whether they admitted it or not – but Steve didn’t hesitate. He came to a stop beside her, the startled faces of her trainers, her fellow neo-Avengers gathering at the door or peering through the cracks in the walls, and hit his knees, looping big arms around her and pulling her into a grip that felt the most like safety of anywhere anymore. It wasn’t that Steve was somehow special because he was less afraid – he was just more willing to ignore it.

 

That trust had evolved into the bond they held now, months into her tenure as a New Avenger, past the point of their fumbling first missions or the soul searching that came with joining the team in the first place. Natasha made it a point not to coddle her if only not to single her out but she was gentler with her in all the ways that someone might not have noticed. More open. Natasha Romanoff, the Black Widow, was not often open with anyone. Wanda wondered if perhaps this attempt at alliance wasn’t a result of Clint Barton’s influence; perhaps it was just Wanda’s lifelong propensity towards observance but the rest of them seemed to underestimate just how much the two of them leaned on one another. Their body language even mirrored one another’s, let alone the quiet push and pull between them that made up their entire friendship. It troubled Wanda that she couldn’t exactly place it – it was not romantic, but not un-romantic either. Intimate.

 

Wanda wondered if that was what she and Pietro would have eventually looked like to a perceptive third party. Something there between them that defied explanation in conventional terms – love, but also more than that, but not clear cut and catching the light like Thor and Jane – but without the obvious tells, the dead giveaways.

 

Closing her eyes in her bed, she remembered the way Pietro had grabbed her after she touched the cradle for the first time and saw Ultron’s ultimate plan. She thought of the way he had taken her into his arms, taken her face between his calloused hands and kissed her forehead to soothe her once the initial shock had passed. Wanda had never needed to say a word aloud – Pietro heard her loud and clear.

 

Maybe there were nothing but obvious tells, dead giveaways.

 

Regardless, if anyone had noticed, no one had opted to say a single fucking word.

 

***

 

Three months in, Wanda was sitting with Dr. Ballato – just Lindsay, now – in the main atrium when the topic Wanda does her level best to avoid comes up.

 

For the most part, Lindsay does her best not to push, not only because Wanda has shaped up to be a very important person in her life but because she’s got a good thing going here at Stark Industries. She would have been convicted as a war criminal, she could be in a maximum security prison or being tortured by whatever clandestine government paid for the chance to extract her knowledge from her. Instead she works in one of the finest research and development companies in the world, eats the best food, sleeps in a paid-for apartment and is generally able to worry about very little nowadays. The nightmares still come – _screaming, running, the shots ringing out crisp and clean as Avignoine’s hand was ripped from hers and she heard him hit the snow, the pounding of her own heart in her ears_ – but they’re fewer and further between now. She’s bleached her hair a shocking pale blonde that clashes against her thick black eyebrows, her dark brown eyes. She’s a new Lindsay.

 

To everyone but Wanda, she’s Lia now.

 

The two young women enjoy each other’s company, often animated conversation about anything and everything but just as often a mutual silence. Shared horror. The kind of silence that exists between war buddies, the people who experienced something truly horrific together and know that words will never do the memory justice.

 

Lindsay picked up one of Wanda’s grapes – she hates the green ones, for whatever reason, so Lindsay ends up eating most of them – and popped it into her mouth, trying to find a casual way into the conversation she knows Wanda doesn’t want to have. It would take nothing for The Scarlet Witch to peer into her mind and see the hesitance, follow the dripping straight back up the faucet and see the big pink elephant in the room but luckily she seems distracted today, gaze averted to the large glass windows. The chopper was being prepared for a test run, several technicians moving around it like ants, polishing various bits and checking gauges, adding fuel, triple checking the engine.

 

“They fuss over that thing like it was a living person,” Wanda observed quietly, fingertips pulling at the napkin beneath her sweating drink absently, “I guess that’s a good thing.”

 

Lindsay studied the curvature of Wanda’s cheekbones, her heavy lidded eyes, and remembered when her accent was so much stronger than it is now. Now, it’s a light lilt compared to the once heavy curl of her voice – she could pass for American-born sometimes.

 

“Well, not everybody can fly,” Lindsay pointed out with a little smile.

 

“It’s not quite flying,” Wanda smiled softly in response but it didn’t reach her eyes, “At least not yet.”

 

Lindsay shifted in her seat uncomfortably, dropping her eyes to the near empty plate before steeling her resolve and looking up at her friend, “Wanda, listen, I know you don’t want to talk about Pi-“

 

“Don’t,” Wanda warned, cutting her eyes back at her friend, her guard coming back up at light speed.

 

Lindsay bit the inside of her cheek and assessed. Their bond ran stronger than the fear that bringing up something that Wanda deeply wanted to avoid would destroy it, but the doctor knew that for every push, Wanda could move just a fraction of an inch away until it had turned into feet, yards, miles. Those little matchsticks built up into catastrophic weight, and she was hardly the only one trying to perforate the veil around Wanda’s grieving. Every little fissure could result in an explosion, and though the last thing on earth Lindsay wanted was for Wanda to think she was afraid of her it didn’t change the fact.

 

Everyone was at least a little scared of Wanda.

 

“I’m not gonna push you, Wanda,” Lindsay tried again, softer, “I’m just worried.”

 

“I understand that,” Wanda shifted her posture, gathering up her garbage in her thin fingers and picking up her bottle of water, the cue that this conversation was over, “You shouldn’t be.”

 

“You know that only makes me worry more.”

 

Wanda stood, finally cutting her gaze at Lindsay’s as more of an act of reassurance than anything else. _No, I’m not angry at you, no, I don’t hate you, I’m just not having this conversation._

 

“Waste of your time,” she said, clipped, “I’ll see you tomorrow, yeah?”

 

“Yeah,” Lindsay echoed back, watching Wanda over her shoulder as the young woman strode off towards the trash cans, shoving in her wad of napkins and wrappers and disappearing back through the sliding glass doors.

 

“She’s a hard sell,” came the voice behind Lindsay, making her jump.

 

Behind her stood Sam Wilson – tall, handsome, funny and unable to catch a karmic break – with his tray in one hand and a hesitant smile on his face.

 

“You, uh, mind any company?”

 

***

 

Combat training proved to be the most difficult of all challenges for Wanda, not because she was less inclined than the others but because this was where her self-control was truly put to the test. It was hard enough not to let unbearable grief and rage, uncertainty and sadness force her to lose control of her abilities on the day to day – grief could destabilize anything, she knew that now – but when she was actively being attacked? This is where it got really tricky.

 

Steve Rogers had a tendency to keep the kid gloves on with most of his new students regardless of experience level or gender. His strength was immense but careful, metered out by someone with a deep understanding of just how much damage could be done by his own carelessness. One could do far worse as far as trainers went. Natasha, on the other hand, was less inclined to take it easy on anyone; perhaps she was proving a point, perhaps she just didn’t know another way. The two of them provided an excellent counterbalance to one another and a very well-rounded approach to combat training that managed to straddle the lines from the savvy and capable Sam Wilson and Rhodey all the way to Vision, who knew no desire for violence and whose capabilities were robotic but impressive, and back to Wanda, easily the most inexperienced of all of them.

 

Being the outlier wasn’t lost on her. Yet again.

 

Missing Pietro came in waves in the training gyms. First, the odd and intense sensation of being only one where she had always been two. Second, the thoughts of just how good at all of this he would have been, even before his enhancements. Third, the absence of his memory or even grief when she was dodging kicks, throwing punches and elevating herself out of harm’s way – glorious, glorious absence, absolutely beautiful empty ache inside of her chest that was alleviated by the pounding of her heart and rushing of adrenaline. If not for the beauty of those few moments when Wanda could exist fully inside of her own body but outside of her own memory, she might not have made it this far.

 

And then, finally, when the memories would come crashing back. She sobbed in the shower as often as she sparred.

 

Still, it was nice to have at least one place in her life with at least one person who wasn’t treating her like she was equal parts glass and time bomb.

 

Natasha’s hands were almost reassuring in how rough they were, how strong her grip so precisely applied. The first time she took Wanda down to the mat in a head-scissor takedown, there was something almost ecstatic about the way the breath was knocked from her lungs, how her ribs and spine ached and cold chills shot up into her back. It felt real. It felt anchoring. There was a ripple of red-hot rage that curled up out of her lungs like dragon smoke, threatening to rattle the walls and build into a nasty head; the power was too immense to sit out an offense like being knocked down. Every other trainer and trainee would watch her with cautious, fearful eyes and breaths held as they waited to see if this would be the punch that unleashed hell up on the building. Wanda expected to be sent back, remediated, taught somewhere else or isolated. Instead, Nat was up and on her feet, pulling Wanda with her by her slender wrist to line her up and do it again. Fearless.

 

It took no time until Wanda was able to overcome being stunned and begin fighting back, emboldened by Natasha’s confidence in her.

 

Now, she could go a few rounds with the Black Widow herself, a feat that she was more than proud of. Hand to hand was obviously not her strongest choice; abilities so suited to subterfuge had taken some time to carve into a physical defense but once they had, she had the upper hand over nearly everyone but Vision. Rhodey and Sam needed the suits to go airborne – Wanda only needed to concentrate hard enough. Sure, she didn’t have the flight sustainability that they or Vision had but the ability to manipulate matter itself? She’d take it over a suit with mounted guns or a light beam on her forehead any day.

 

***

 

Vision studies conversations like maps. The way he – he? – tilts his head like a dog watching a spider crawl up a wall when she’s speaking doesn’t immediately strike her as anything other than the curiosity of something that has no concept of being self-conscious. Eventually, once he’s wearing sweaters and learning how to cook in the kitchen and acting like the best approximation of a human that he can muster, she sees it for what it really is. Fascination. Kinship. Affection, blossoming somewhere small but undeniable. The idea half flatters her and half makes her nauseas – how on earth could she be accountable for teaching someone who was still learning how to be human about affection? Who could stand beneath the weight of shouldering literally the very first expectations, desires, explorations of someone who walked fully grown into an arena where the rest of them had been practicing since childhood?

 

Beneath that fear lurked the bigger anxiety – how could she ever be accountable for loving someone, anyone, who wasn’t Pietro? The answer was swift and decisive – no. She couldn’t. And not just where Vision was concerned.

 

Sitting in front of her therapist, Wanda shifted her legs uncomfortably and turned to watch out of the full-length glass window. One of the many cats that Tony insisted on feeding (or rather, insisted on having fed by someone else, since he was almost never there) moved through the tall flowers in the bed lining the building’s exterior. The casual slink of its shoulders under its orange fur was oddly calming, like the cadence of its silent footfalls. Wanda wondered if maybe a pet would do her some good.

 

“Wanda?”

 

She blinked, torn out of the introspection and back into the moment as she looked at her therapist with wide eyes. Jesse, resident therapist and eventual confidante to the Scarlet Witch herself after months of Sam Wilson’s gentle behest, raised their eyebrows and gave Wanda a patient, small smile.

 

“You still with us today?” they asked without irritation, almost amused.

 

A touch embarrassed if anything, Wanda nodded and shifted again, crossing her thin legs on the luxe leather couch. The therapy office was admittedly cozy, meant to look more like a well-read parent’s library than a clinical setting. There were bookshelves along each wall, both rooms connected with a large open doorway so that the desk and files were far enough away that they weren’t glaring reminders of the purpose of the visit. Jesse sat in a lovely brown leather chair, worn in all the right places from the looks of it, and Wanda remembered her long gone father’s favorite chair in their apartment in Sokovia. The pang passed through her – grief had hollowed out her insides so cleanly that sometimes she worried there was nothing for any other emotion to catch on, all of it simply washed out with the next exhale, unable to gain purchase anywhere near her heart or mind.

 

“It’s okay if you’re having trouble focusing,” Jesse reminded gently, a well-manicured eyebrow arching over the frame of their glasses, “You know what we keep saying, remember?”

 

“’I can do anything but not everything’,” Wanda repeated softly, eyes casting back out to the flowerbed to find it empty of any cats.

 

“Exactly. And with those of you with abilities like yours, that’s a hard thing to fathom. I wish I had some superhuman way to just drill it straight into your ears but it takes practice, you’re literally rebuilding neural pathways every time you challenge your destructive capabilities.”

 

Wanda didn’t particularly believe that it would get easier but it was what everyone had been telling her. New coping mechanisms, new methods of processing information, all like flexing the muscles in her already overpowered brain until they had carved new ridges and dips into themselves. One day, it wouldn’t take active, steady concentration to keep from killing someone in combat.

 

Still, there was at least some trust for Jesse though it had been hard earned. The risk was definitely higher on the therapist’s part – it wasn’t every day that they were given a client who could have slipped into their mind and knocked over the metaphorical furniture just as easily as they could sit on a couch – but it had paid off. Wanda wasn’t an easy client by any stretch of the imagination, but that had made any small improvements feel like huge victories. Stark had his own personal therapist, whichever unfortunate fuck that happened to be, and would likely talk ad nauseam. Steve was a harder study, forthcoming and straightforward in many ways but still uncomfortable and skiddish in others. Rhodey preferred not to engage – maybe he had his own therapist, maybe he didn’t – and Sam was well versed enough to be a breeze to talk to, comfortable in his own feelings and able to self-check without intervention most of the time.

 

Wanda? Wanda was a locked box at the bottom of the ocean. Any move closer to getting her to open up was a huge, welcome step forward.

 

But, there was a topic that Jesse had been purposely avoiding pushing near, allowing Wanda to lead the conversation there on the few times it occurred but not prying for fear of closing down that avenue just as it began to consider opening. However, this was also the topic that they’d been instructed by the powers that be to try to discuss as big decisions loomed in the background. Unsure and nervous about proceeding, Jesse shifted their legs and tapped the pen against their open notebook.

 

“Wanda,” they began carefully as her eyes moved back to them, sensing the apprehension, “You know that we’ve been careful to have self-guided sessions, and I don’t intend to make you do anything you don’t want to –“

 

_And here it comes_ , Wanda thought, her mouth a line.

 

“ – but, part of therapy is also going to be confronting subjects that cause us discomfort or pain to try to learn those new coping mechanisms we always talk about. Part of this process is pushing through discomfort and into a deeper understanding of ourselves and the world around us.”

 

Wanda kept her eyes trained on their face - the bridge of their elegant nose, the way their eyes caught nervously on the paper instead of staying steadily on hers.

 

“Wanda, if you feel you can, we need to talk about Pietro a little more.”

 

This hadn’t been a surprise by any stretch of the imagination. Wanda assumed that most people who engaged her in conversation at this point were doing it to slip their way into a steady rapport, find an easy entrance into a much harder conversation, one she wasn’t willing to have with anyone just yet. Taking a moment to weather the flip-flop of her stomach in her cold, empty gut, she levelled her gaze at Jesse and shrugged slightly to downplay the moment.

 

“What is there to say we haven’t said? You know what happened in Novi Grad. You know we were lovers. What else is there to be addressed?”

 

“Well,” Jesse’s voice came carefully around the very well-chosen words, “There’s obviously still one very large elephant in the room, isn’t there?”

 

Wanda stood up, picking her back up with carefully metered calmness that fell just short of convincing, “Our session is almost out of time, Dr. DeWitt, and I am really not feeling up for it but thank you.”

 

“Wanda,” Jesse pleaded gently.

 

“I will see you next week,” Wanda avoided their eyes, moving to and past the door as she pulled on her red leather jacket.

 

Jesse sighed, rubbing their temples. This was why they had specifically told the higher ups that this conversation wasn’t going to work, that forcing Wanda Maximoff into a corner was not going to force anything good, much less the desired results. Closing their notebook, Jesse climbed out of the chair and went to put their calls on hold for the remainder of the evening. Through the window, they could see the long brown hair and red jacket traveling quickly out across the grass. As they watched, she slowed to a stop and crouched down, reaching out a hand carefully to call out to a stray orange cat.

 

No progress today for the session, but perhaps some progress for Wanda herself.  


	2. Crimson

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Wanda looked over at Clint but didn’t respond. Either the exhaustion of the bout or the wearing down of her defenses against all the suffering she was so quietly doing had taken the steam out of her, and the immediate desire to shut him down and storm away was lost under the memory that it was Clint that Pietro had died for. Pietro found this one worthy of laying down not only his own life but the life he shared with his sister – he had sacrificed not only himself but half of her as well. She had resisted cooperating with him for this long. Maybe it was time to listen._
> 
> _“You knew this discussion was coming again, Wanda. A lot of people have been trying to have it with you.”_
> 
> _“There is not much to be said,” she held his gaze, knowing there was a lot to be said._  
>   
> 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wasn't going to post this just yet for a number of reasons - namely being the ones I previously mentioned such as I'm getting married in early October and I'm trying to squirrel back some stuff for y'all to read while I'm gone - but backstory time. 
> 
> I write a lot about grief because I know a lot about grief. Not only from work either, although a lot of you may know by this point I have been involved in victim advocacy for a good 8 years now in several different forms (primarily sexual and domestic violence survivors). 
> 
> Today is the 13 year anniversary of my mother's death, and I wrote the last part of this piece while reflecting on that grief and remembering how profound it was and everything that comes with it. 
> 
> That said, fair warning, this chapter is sad and does a lot of reflecting on what it means to lose someone who is a pillar of your world. 
> 
> I hope you all are well, and as always, you can find me on tumblr at noccalula-writes - new stuff coming soon.  
>   
> 

 

 

“When he shall die,

Take him and cut him out in little stars,

And he will make the face of heaven so fine

That all the world will be in love with night

And pay no worship to the garish sun.”

 

\- Shakespeare

 

 

 

Crimson

 

 

The only picture Wanda has of her brother is from the final battle that took him away. He’s a blonde blur on the streets of the city they once called home, caught in a perfect frozen moment by a camera with a much more powerful lens than she’d have imagined. His profile: his perfect sharp nose, long lashes, blue eyes are all fixed forward as he’s focused on something in the distance, that smoothness in his brow that only came when he was too busy running to furrow. Even as a child – a relatively happy child, all things considered – Pietro had kept that discerning, scrutinizing look on his face more often than any other expression, like he was peering straight into someone instead of just looking at them. When the large cork board arrived in her room no more than a week into her tenure at the compound, all Wanda wanted to do was cover it with pictures of Pietro and dried flowers, fake flowers, any sort of effigy she could put together to her grief. She wanted handmade candles and charms and crucifixes and pieces of wood from a tree from home, rocks and a lock of Pietro’s hair.

 

Instead she had a fucking surveillance photo from the battle that killed him, a chunk of Sokovian street gravel, and a few tea-light candles from Wal-Mart.

 

This felt like the cheapest, most hollow thing she could be left to grieve with possible. Even then, how much grieving could she do here in this in-between place? There was no solace in either direction she could lean – hope or devastation, to wait with baited breath for an answer that may never come or to embrace the inevitability of bone-shattering sadness.

 

There was no moving on. There was no movement at all. Only stagnation on this pond of awful sickness in her gut, the cold feeling of failure and loss too incomprehensibly big to grapple with. Grief was a monster chasing her from the moment she woke to the moment she went to sleep, and she knew there wouldn’t be enough left in her to run forever. Still, she wasn’t ready to give up just yet.

 

Vision brought her flowers, which would have been appreciated more if he hadn’t phased through the wall with them while she sat on her bed, staring at the flat screen tv that wasn’t even on. His careful, buttoned-up, sweater vested image was sometimes curious and sometimes deeply sad, like watching a wild animal perform for the circus. Vision wasn’t human and neither a man nor a woman, but everyone referred to him as “he”; this didn’t seem to bother him very much and he answered to it readily, but deep down Wanda wondered if that was because he was comfortable with the label or if it was assimilation, lack of a notion that there was a choice to be had at all. The big problem with Vision however was the fact that he just didn’t understand most human concepts, namely boundaries or privacy. He seemed to understand that Wanda wanted to be left alone most of the time and likewise, he seemed to understand that this was generally viewed as a bad thing; while he was no more guilty of pushing gently than Steve or Tony, there was something about the fact that there was no way to guard against his good intentions that unsettled her. Sure, any of the others could kick in a locked door if the shit hit the fan, but what guard was there against someone to whom doors were irrelevant as both a concept and a reality?

 

At the core of it, all of Wanda’s trust had to rely on Vision’s clearly lacking understanding of what it meant to be human and have places within oneself that you just don’t want others coming into.

 

To her credit, Wanda was patient with him, more patient than she could have been or certainly would have been had it been Thor or Steve or even Natasha. The first time she had screamed in shock, having hardly anticipated someone coming out of the wall as she tacked up a string of white lights near the head of her bed. Vision seemed startled by this and then suddenly ashamed, as if he hadn’t even entertained how this might be disruptive or alarming to her. This made Wanda feel guilty for her (righteous) irritation, sending the whole thing back into a spiral she wasn’t overtly fond of. Vision does something that needs to be corrected, Wanda corrects Vision, Vision seems respectful enough of the correction but somehow Wanda still feels as though she’s done something wrong.

 

_This is being alive_ , Wanda pondered as she stared at the white lilies he’d left in a clear vase on her dresser, _This is being a woman_.

 

Eventually, her bedroom became her sanctuary. Wanda more than anyone on the team received a number of gifts both from other team members and the general public; Natasha’s file dump had long proceeded her involvement with the Avengers but transparency had become the name of the game since the fall of SHIELD. As a result, she had a newfound level of celebrity that she had no idea how to cope with or process. For her own sake, Wanda avoided the internet as best she could via the Steve Rogers method of only learning the bare minimums of how most social media and tech worked. However, unlike Steve, Wanda was of a generation that had learned these things at a young age, and it was purely by accident that she became far more proficient with a smartphone than she’d ever been before.

 

Stark Industries adjacency meant top-notch tech of all kinds – the thinnest, flattest tv she’d ever seen in her life, a laptop as light as a boiled egg, a phone that was as intuitive as another person. Friday’s presence in the building had been a creepy adjustment falling along the same lines as Vision; the notion that she was somehow never alone went from jarring to comforting and then cycled back into jarring again. Wanda found herself going outside for long and longer stretches, walking through the neighboring forests by herself or in contemplative silence with Steve those times that he asked to join her; being alone and un-surveilled at least once or twice a week became a necessity for her own sanity. All this power, all these dark feelings and brand new changes required so much adjustment, so very much of her time and concentration that sometimes the only answer was relative silence, solitude. It took time for her bedroom to become a safe haven.

 

After all, she’d never had one to herself before save her cell in the Sokovian research building.

 

***

 

The dreams weren’t constant, and she longed for them during the stretches where they did not come.

In them she was lying beside Pietro. Sometimes they were on a bed – that hotel bed in the city where they had spent some of the happiest nights of her life, the only time she can ever recall being truly happy since the bombings that took their parents – or in a forest, against a bed of green, soft moss. Wanda could smell him, the familiar sanctuary of his skin both sweaty or freshly washed. His hair was soft in her fingers, tangles of blonde or dark brown depending on the dream. He was healthy, well-muscled and well fed the way they left the compound after years of starving. His eyes sparked with the equal pull of adoration and mischief that he’d always held in how he looked at her. His breath was warm on her skin.

 

He laughed, and she felt like every drop of herself that had ever leaked from her body had been poured back in.

 

Sometimes, they kissed. Sometimes, they fucked. Those were some of the best and worst nights – Wanda would wake up feverish and wet, miserably turned on and rudderless on the sea of her own desires. She’d never gotten quite around to masturbating, any sexual exploration done with her brother feeling just as free and easy as it would have by herself but leaving her without a frame of reference. The first time it seemed unavoidable that she’d have to do something about it, Wanda slipped her hand into her pajama pants with a kind of forwardness that only being sleepy and stuck between a dream and reality would provide her in this arena. The first few strokes on her clit felt amazing, like so much relief against the throbbing onslaught of her own want. However, the next few felt wrong somehow, as if something horrible were happening or something huge were missing – of course at least one thing was missing – and she snatched back her hand like it had been on a hot burner. Deep sobs had wracked through her ribs and she cried herself sore, any tingling in the endings of her severed emotional nerves killed by the immensity of the grief.

 

The dreams didn’t stop, even if she did.

 

Sometimes she was kissing Pietro only to realize she was then kissing Steve, or Natasha, or even Tony. The last didn’t repulse her the way she expected it to, a fire that used to be sheer hatred for the man returning from somewhere dark and hidden as she wrapped a hand around his throat and bit down on his lip until she tasted blood.

 

When she awoke panting and trembling and euphoric, she knew she’d already come.

 

It reminded her to never lose sight of the fact that no matter how deeply it might have been buried, her house was built on rage.

 

***

 

It was rare that Clint spent more time in the compound than he absolutely had to, but when he visited he always made a point to try to get Wanda alone. Sometimes it was walks outside (“Fresh air, chirping birds, animal shit – y’know, forest stuff, calm your nerves”). Other times it was in the gymnasium, either sparring with each other or learning new ways to co-fight. Wanda discovered her ability could send Clint’s arrows with unnatural force – one pierced straight through the target and lodged halfway through the adjacent concrete wall without splintering – but they also found that it often sent his immaculately aimed shot just a fraction off target, which could be disastrous in the field. In the end, they did a lot of assisted jumps and protection bubbles.

 

On one such day, Clint stepped in in place of Natasha for a morning round of hand-to-hand.

 

The gym was empty save them, Natasha having taken the others outside for flight-specific drills. Hindsight being twenty-twenty, Wanda should have known something was happening when after twenty minutes no one showed up to interrupt or run uninvited commentary (Sam, Rhodey). It would have been easy enough to peer inside of Clint’s mind and see apprehension, nervousness, fear – but there were lines that Wanda was doing her best not to cross and this was a big one. His body language wasn’t terribly different but to be fair, Clint was an exceptional bluffer. His poker face was the stuff of legend.

 

Still, she couldn’t shake the sensation that they were building up to something as she dodged a very adept kick or as the swirling red around her hands acted as a blocking buffer against a staff swung at her head. The anxiety of it lurched in her empty stomach as she dipped down to avoid another attack, grabbing for the archer’s knee with every intention of snatching his leg out from under him. To Wanda’s credit, Clint faltered for a moment before he was able to slip like an eel through the reeds out of her grip and recover with an acrobat’s grace. Emboldened by the momentary slip, Wanda took the moment of vulnerability to grab onto the staff and yank with both hands, pulling Clint down hard. Her eyes caught the steel-blue of his as he loomed down at her with only a trace of shock across his face – a triumph for her, really – but it lasted barely a second before he was using his momentum to flip back over onto his feet.

 

The beauty of this was that it gave Wanda just a moment to re-center her grip and give a good, hard pull while Clint was too busy sticking his landing for the sake of his ever-aging ankles to mind his death hold on the staff.

 

When he whipped back around to reassess the situation, the staff’s blunt end was mere inches from his throat. Wanda, victorious, almost grinned as she held it steady, feet planted firm and wide.

 

“Checkmate.”

 

Clint grinned.

 

Sitting on the bench near the giant plate glass windows, they were both toweling off sweat and swigging down water when he finally made the decision to jump.

 

“Pietro.”

 

Any mention of her brother’s name resulting in Wanda’s immediate self-expulsion from the conversation. It took serious gumption to even broach the subject with her where so many others had been met with outright resistance; as Vision would so astutely point out in the future, the fear of Wanda was not deliberate but a reaction that was almost impossible to control. Clint had been the biggest candidate supported for the inevitable conversation – all the others agreed he’d have more luck than anyone else – but he too had been met with the same glass wall of refusal as everyone else who had tried. He’d been the first to try and the first to fail.

 

But Clint was also smart with his persistence. As per usual, Clint knew he’d only get one shot every so often to get it right, and if nothing else he had the patience to wait until conditions were ideal before he loosed this metaphorical arrow. It was time for another try. His heart wouldn’t let him ignore that this needed to be addressed.

 

Wanda looked over at him but didn’t respond. Either the exhaustion of the bout or the wearing down of her defenses against all the suffering she was so quietly doing had taken the steam out of her, and the immediate desire to shut him down and storm away was lost under the memory that it was Clint that Pietro had died for. Pietro found this one worthy of laying down not only his own life but the life he shared with his sister – he had sacrificed not only himself but half of her as well. She had resisted cooperating with him for this long. Maybe it was time to listen.

 

“You knew this discussion was coming again, Wanda. A lot of people have been trying to have it with you.”

 

“There is not much to be said,” she held his gaze, knowing there was a lot to be said.

 

Clint’s natural fear of her flared only briefly when she didn’t look away, something in his gut shifting uneasily as he remembered the way her eyes could flash red, how she could dig her talons into his mind and rip up every bit of flooring he’d ever put down over the basement full of monsters he carried around between his ears. He remembered how it had made him feel to watch Natasha almost flinch when holding eye contact with the girl. The strongest person he knew was well aware that Wanda Maximoff had the permanent upper hand.

 

What an act of courage it had been to support her and give her freedom instead of locking her away in sheer terror. How brave, his Nat, his entire team.

 

“There’s one big, important thing that needs to be said.”

 

Clint’s tone was as gentle as it ever got and he held her gaze, wanting to give her the honesty and the respect of directly addressing the silver, bullet-ridden elephant in the room.

 

“Wanda, he’s not coming back. The cradle hasn’t changed anything. He’s not waking up.”

 

When Dr. Cho and then Dr. Ballato had said this very same thing to Wanda barely a week after their arrival, she refused to hear it. Fat tears slid down her ruddy cheeks and she stared at them both while guilt burned holes in Lindsay’s heart. As soon as the inevitable question came up Wanda insisted _no, no, he would come back, he was still coming back don’t you know Pietro he will always come back_ until the walls shook and the terror in both of their faces matched what lived inside of Wanda.

 

“We’re keeping his body alive but he’s not in it anymore,” Clint contemplated reaching for her hand but opted instead to simply lay his beside hers, palm up, in case she wanted to take him up on it, “And you can’t keep going on this way.”

 

“I can’t keep going on if he truly dies. You don’t understand. He’s my _brother_.”

 

There was so much that the word “brother” couldn’t even begin to touch on. They were so much more than this label. It was still the only thing she could safely reach for. The thought had crossed Clint’s mind that perhaps the nature of their relationship was different from what he expected, but at the end of the day Clint Barton knew when something was none of his fucking business.

 

“You’re right. I don’t understand. But if it were me and I knew that my sister was suffering this badly, I’d want her to move on. I’d want her to be happy.”

 

Tears Wanda didn’t ask for lined her eyes and she cast her gaze to the floor. Clint could almost feel the physical sensation of it being pulled off of him.

 

“How am I supposed to do that?” Wanda’s voice trembled but did not raise, nary a trace of red save the bloodshot of her eyes, “I have been holding a place for him but I know… I kn-…”

 

Clint kept his hand out for her to take or not take, her choice. He closed his eyes and listened to her voice break, because if he was going to be the one to have her make the call, he had better be prepared to weather through the oncoming storm with her.

 

“ _Știu că el nu se va întoarce_.”

 

***

(Press Play: “Fourth of July”, Sufjan Stevens)

 

The medical portion of the training facility held Pietro and Dr. Cho’s cradle in the lowest level to minimize disturbances. For the first few weeks of their tenure at the compound, Wanda spent nearly every waking moment in the sterile, low-lit room, nothing but her brother’s vacant body and the steady, soft hiss of the machinery to keep her company between attendant rounds. The only time she came close to laughter was when a gentle medic made the soft-spoken joke that she would need to Windex where Wanda’s cheek would press into the glass while she nodded off. The joke was dumb but kind, delivered with good intentions that had given Wanda close to a moment’s peace.

 

Sometimes they would open the glass to recalibrate the machine, a mask going quickly over Pietro’s slack nose and mouth to keep inflating his lungs while they worked around the obstacle of Wanda sitting at his bedside. His skin was cool but not cold, still circulated and healthy pink. His hair rested in a blonde tangle, his dark eyelashes still against his cheeks. His eyes didn’t move beneath the lids. He didn’t stir.

 

Wanda cherished those blessed few moments to hold his hand; they were gone so fast.

 

Weeks in, something inside of her snapped and suddenly she couldn’t even look at the cradle, much less her comatose, brain-dead brother. She went down for her daily visitation hours as a dread with incomprehensible weight took hold of her gut and by the time she made it to the doorway of the room, her knees threatened to give up completely. She’d turned and nearly ran back up the stairs and back to the safety of the dormitory to sob in shock and confusion.

 

Fresh off of the most painful conversation of her life in the gymnasium, Wanda showered, put on a beautiful black dress, and walked out of her room. The conference table near the kitchen atrium was at capacity, a dozen pairs of eyes moving over to her as soon as she came into view. The physical sensation felt like being struck, the wave of pity and fear washing over her like so much water. Wanda said nothing, not even when the raw pain on Clint’s face jarred her; he never showed his hand. Blessedly, no one waited for her to speak and no one spoke as Steve joined her in the hall, walking beside her in silence until they reached the end of the medical wing, the stairs that led down to the room that housed the cradle. Wanda hesitated, pausing to chew on her already raw lower lip as she turned to look over at Steve with a child’s fear.

 

“We’re here,” he said softly, the cornflower blue of his eyes deeply sad but a smile pulling regretfully at his lips, “We’re all here, upstairs. You don’t have to be alone.” 

 

She remembered the first time she saw him in the compound, how he had hardly seemed real. Too beautiful to be a living thing and radiating a pureness that made her feel sullied in comparison just by standing too close to him.

 

Anything hopeful she might have thought to say died on her tongue as she turned back to stare down the stairs, like it was a descent down to the gallows. Everything about this was awful. Everything about it was excruciating and painful and sad and frightening, like laying on a conveyor belt leading straight to a buzzsaw. The inevitable end wasn’t a vague concept anymore, it was staring her right in the face. This was it. She was letting go. Giving up. It felt like failure. It felt wrong.

 

Her brother was down there, and she was going to go have him turned off like a television. A power switch would be hit and he would be gone. Gone, like yesterday’s garbage, wasting months in this cradle for absolutely nothing.

 

Wanda didn’t even remember taking the steps down but there she was, leaning in the doorway for balance’s sake, watching Dr. Cho turn off all but the final vital functions on the machine. The beauty of the cradle was how little it needed to do its job; there were no tubes down his throat or stuck in his nostrils, no needles in his arms or patches stuck to his skin, only Pietro himself laying in a soft gray shirt and pants. Helen cut her eyes up at Wanda with a small nod, going back to her configurations. Wanda always appreciated this about Helen – she was a doctor and a scientist through and through who didn’t make a lot of attempts at being overly personable. She wasn’t cold or cruel but maintained a healthy distance, much like Wanda herself.

 

Considering what was happening in this room in but a few short moments, there was nothing else Wanda wanted less in the world than to deal with being draped in other people’s sympathies.

 

This was it. This was finally it. The thing that Wanda had been bracing against, dreading, ignoring and anticipating all in rapid-fire rotation was standing right in front of her. Pietro’s heart had kept on beating but to no avail, and the reality that she would have to kill her brother, however gently, was upon her in this moment where she had finally exhausted any of her places to run.

 

It was time.

 

Coming close to the cradle made her wince, her eyes already welled with tears. His hair had grown long, tangled white curls with long dark roots fanned out around his sleeping face. His stubble was back though short enough to tell her that someone else had been shaving him in her stead; his nails were trimmed as well. He could very well have only been sleeping if not for the truth that Wanda could never admit to herself fully before this moment.

 

He wasn’t there.

 

He wasn’t anywhere.

 

Pietro had died in Novi Grad, no matter what the cradle had done to his body. Her twin brother, the other half of her heart, was long gone.

 

The room may as well have been empty save herself and Helen Cho.

 

There was an entire room worth of moral support upstairs who would have been standing right beside her if she’d asked, but she stood alone by her own choice. She had been right beside him when they both came into the world in a cacophony of screaming and happy sobbing so very long ago – and yet not that long ago at all – and there was nothing that felt natural about any of this except if she were right beside him for final step of his journey out. This was very little solace considering that there was nary a trace of Pietro anywhere to be felt, no sensation of their shared heartbeats even as his pumped inside of his chest.

 

This wasn’t Pietro’s final step – it was Wanda’s.

 

“It will happen fast,” Helen offered softly, elegant fingers working the holographic screen, “He is not breathing on his own and once the cradle is off, he will not resume.”

 

“Yes,” Wanda exhaled, coming to a slow stop at the chair she had always sat in.

 

It was directly in the way of any attending medical staff. Someone should have moved it unless it was being frequently used.

 

Wanda logged that away and focused on the moment, these last moments with her brother’s living, warm body. He would rot in the ground or burn in a cremation machine. There would be nothing left of him but ashes or bones, and she’d still be here whiling away the time on the agonizing slide towards the same fate – only without her brother.

 

Even looking directly into his beautiful face, she knew she’d been without him this entire time.

 

The Avengers saved the world in Novi Grad, but Wanda’s world ended there regardless.

 

It ended for the second time when Helen Cho turned off the cradle, the soft hiss fading into nothing as the lights dimmed and the front slid down.

 

Wanda took his hand and held it between both of hers as his heart slowed to a stop, but she felt no catch in her own chest the way she had for the entirety of her life until the battle in Sokovia. There was no more denying the truth. The tether between them had been snapped when he hit the pavement, his body riddled with bullets.

 

The long road between that moment and this had been for nothing. Her brother, her lover, her best friend had been gone for a long, long time.

 

Pietro Maximoff finally died.

 

 

 


End file.
